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Erotes on the Euphrates: A Figured Frieze in a Private House at Hellenistic Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates

April 2009 (113.2)
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Erotes on the Euphrates: A Figured Frieze in a Private House at Hellenistic Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates

113.2
Heather Jackson
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This paper presents new evidence for Hellenistic wall painting in the Near East and proposes a reconstruction of a Masonry Style painted wall at Jebel Khalid, with figured frieze, on the model of painted walls in Hellenistic houses at Delos and elsewhere in the Hellenistic world. This is the first figured frieze to be published from Hellenistic Syria. Its iconography belongs firmly to the Hellenistic artistic tradition, and its discovery in a military settlement in a remote part of northern Syria raises the question of which was the cogent influence: the Macedonian tradition of fine wall painting, which may have come with the settlers, or subsequent trading connections with the Aegean islands and Asia Minor. I hope that the paper will form a starting point for research into the regional characteristics of wall painting in the Seleucid period.

More articles like this: 
Cultural Interaction
Hellenistic Period
Iconography
Masonry
Painting
Survey
Near East

Erotes on the Euphrates: A Figured Frieze in a Private House at Hellenistic Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates

By Heather Jackson

American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 113, No. 2 (April 2009), pp. 231–253

DOI: 10.3764/aja.113.2.231

© 2009 Archaeological Institute of America

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